Is the Entire Credit System a Conspiracy?

If you live in the US, you've probably had to work out a weird thing called "credit" -- your credit score, dictated by private organizations, determines a huge part of your life. And, as Ben, Matt and Noel learn in tonight's episode... there may well be a genuine (and dangerous) conspiracy at play.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here that makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. And tonight, friends and neighbors,
fellow conspiracy realist, and hopefully literally everyone on Netflix. We

(00:51):
are exploring something a lot of us honestly don't like
thinking about. Credit. Jay Z has a whole song about it,
which is pretty good. We're talking about a song called
the Story of OJ by jay Z, controversial to some
talks about credit. We also want to let you know, folks,

(01:13):
since we're back to our original roots as a video podcast,
we've got to let you know that some of our
scenery is changing back and forth as we are on
the road at various times. And we can't thank you
enough for sticking with us, and we're giving you a

(01:34):
lot of credit for this. Guys. It's true that for
a lot of our longtime listeners, friends and neighbors around
the world, the idea of credit or financial stuff may
not seem to be the usual stuff they don't want
you to know fair, but we argue credit is inherently

(01:58):
conspiratorial about it. You guys, we talked about it a
little bit off air before we were recording today here
in the United States. Your financial trustworthiness what they call
your credit worthiness, your like how much society likes you,
is based on something called a credit score, which later

(02:22):
informs our earlier episode on the government of China's sesame
credit or social credits.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
Just a further like gamification of the whole system that
applies to literally everything, like out of that Black Mirror
episode with Ron Howard's daughter, where they've got a whole
system in place where you literally can't even get a
plane ticket, or you can't there's certain things that you
were just excluded from. If your you know, your clout
number sinks below a certain threshold.

Speaker 5 (02:51):
That's literally what all this stuff is.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Oh, one hundred percent, a million percent.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
It goes back to the the latest eighteen hundred you
can get eight ninety nine low company called retail credit company.
But it goes back to organizations that want to know
if you, as a company or corporation are good for.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
It, are solvent?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, and then it turns into are you the individual
good for it when it comes to being loaned money
and given a chance to pay interest on something, which
is just extortion.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
I love that we're walking down the street already for extortion,
which I argue is true and usurious. That's our word
of the day, right, and we.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
Get hopscotch down the street just a little further to
talk about the disconnect between the way people like you
or I are treated and the way the one percent
of the one percent and corporations are treated.

Speaker 6 (03:48):
Where you know, debt is a good thing.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, An average person in the United States is a
very US centric episode, folks. Average person in the United
States owe somebody something that is that person's problem. Average
one percenter And sorry, guys, you can be a one
percenter and still an average schmuck if you owe something
that's the institution's problem. And that is time and time

(04:14):
again every day millions of people rely on this concept.
We introduce just now a credit score to finance loans,
credit cards, houses, cars, way much more and this system
is so bizarre it doesn't make sense. Everybody accepts it
as normal, the way people walk around with neck ties,

(04:38):
with ties with cravats, like why why are you doing this?

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Why not? When it goes back to how much information
can they gather on you, whether you're a company or
an individual, it's literally what it is, how much info
can they get on you? And as that's the stuff
they don't want you to know at the heart of
this thing. And as we get into it, we're going
to find that a lot of the things that we've
been worried about when it comes to our privacy, the

(05:06):
thing ben as you say, does not exist anymore. As
we get closer to those things we've been so worried about,
we kind of forgot about. I was gonna say trade,
but the Equifax and experience and transcendion.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Ah, yes, a bit of a spoiler. Let's call it foreshadowing.
Let's talk about the as we're introducing the big bag
of badgers here, the big three badgers in the bag.
The lets talk about how weird it is to explain
this so again, this system is so bizarre. If you
explained it to an outsider, your credit goes down if
you get in too much debt. It can go up

(05:42):
when you get more credit cards, more opportunity for debt.
It can go up if you have a long term
debt and you make successful payments, but it can go
down if you close a credit card. It can go
down if you actually pay off your debt. It's confusing
as heck. We argue that's at least partially by design.
And get this, folks, there is no single government agency

(06:06):
determining this. Instead, there is a cabal of private groups
known as credit bureaus. I vote we talk.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
About oh Man bureaus already has a shadowy ring to it.
We're gonna talk about all of those aspects of what
it means to have a credit score.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
After a quick little pause.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Here or the facts, all right, we got to start
with credit cards, most physical manifestation of debt in the
entirety of the United States. If we look at the
New York FED, as of twenty twenty five, collective credit
card debt in the United States has hit over one
point two three trillion dollars. Again, that's credit cards alone.

(06:55):
That's not counting student loans, medical debt. The main the
leader in bankruptcy and.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
The lower your score is obviously the higher the interest
rate you're going to be paying.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, and one point two three brillion dollars is that
even real money? It's approximately and this is again per
the FED, that is something like six thousand, five hundred
to six thousand, five hundred and twenty three bucks per person.

(07:26):
It's also a creepy, crooked average because it's not evenly distributed.
If you're in a younger generation like millennials or lower
income households, then you statistically carry more of that debt.
And this is the thing we love because we're pro nerd.

(07:48):
On our show, multiple economists I almost call them economicist
multiple economists argue this is bad, but their concerns get
dismissed so often because sometimes those nerdy proclamations are politically
or economically inconvenient, you know, like now, as we record

(08:11):
on Tuesday, January twentieth, Well.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's a weird situation that the credit card companies are
in when there are so many people using their products
that are in such massive amounts of debt. Because, as
we said, that's.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
The idea of credit card as a product. By the way,
it's that's what I mean. I mean, it is, and
that's how they're selling it, but it still just kind
of boggles my mind a little bit when you think
about it.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
And each company has dozens of them different types and
styles of product that they can push on. You remember
we talked about the Wells Fargo episode. We talked about
them pushing different products. So when they one of the
reasons they had to create all those fake accounts that
one time that happened, yes, by one time, was because
they had to sell more products in the form of

(08:52):
accounts and cards and those kinds of things. The point
about this that's so weird is that those companies are
going to still be getting interest payments. Theoretically, that's a
common tactic that humans have decided to do. We put
a bunch of money on those credit cards, and then
we'll just pay the interest and it'll, you know, continue
to sit there, that big debt, but we'll pay the

(09:13):
interest and maybe a tiny bit of that that loan
that we've taken out essentially through our credit because it
is a loan. A credit card is alone and every
time you use it, right.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Sure, like the industrial age.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
But those credit card companies are getting those interest payments,
so they're theoretically fine as long as it doesn't have
a big sweeping you know, black Tuesday. Was it a
Black Tuesday that happened where everybody was like just decided
to stop using some of your cancel everything, or need
everything all at once.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Or run on a bank, right like in the Great
Depression days. And I'm going to go on record again saying,
just as a writer, that is a terrible name. There
was nothing great about it. It was just depressing and nuts.
We also we go back to credit cards, right, that's
our entry point here because we think about them as

(10:04):
a pretty modern financial innovation, but the concept of credit
in general dates back into antiquity. Like our good friends
at IGU point out, as soon as somebody came up
with the idea of cash, a second person came up
and said, nol, what's that line from Popeye we always

(10:26):
like about hamburgers.

Speaker 6 (10:27):
I'll gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
Right. Yeah. The concept of credit, or.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
The concept of not even cash, just value, right, Like
I mean, just stuff holding value and being worth more
than the physical object and its utility. That is the
crux of all of this, I guess, right, Yeah, So.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Our third guy comes up and walks into this conversation
and says, hey, I got a pitch ed. The proposition was,
why don't we replace currency, right or goods with concepts,
the idea of owing someone something without money immediately changing hands,

(11:12):
and we don't. We've talked about this in previous episodes,
but there's a there's a great outfit called the Points
Guy that sums up the history pretty darn well talking
about how this this concept of credit and credit later
credit cards and then later credit scores and then later

(11:34):
credit bureaus sort of the antagonist of our story tonight.
It dates back to Mesopotamian and Haroping civilizations. They they
were using clay tablets right because they didn't have iPhones
at that point. They they were tracking and carving out
etching their trade and transactions, and it was basically the

(11:55):
idea of credit cards. And if you go to archaeologists
and anthropological experts, folks like Jonathan Mark kno Yer over
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, you would see that
they had these kind of international agreements or inter civilization agreements,

(12:16):
and they had to use them out of necessity because
they were trading so much stuff. That you couldn't carry
around whatever past for money all the time, or you
couldn't you know, you couldn't strap thirty cattle on your back,
or thirty rocks or whatever.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
I don't know if you guys remember this, And I
might be hallucinating this, but I'm picturing Fred Flintstone whipping
out a massive slab of granite that says credit card
and Fred Flintstone on it, and like plopping it down,
you know, on a table to purchase somethington Universe. It
might have been in one of the movies. Honestly, but
doesn't that seem like a gag they would do?

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yes, it does right for them.

Speaker 6 (12:58):
They'll have a second career writing for the flint Stones.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
I believe in you, dude.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
I don't know if they're around anymore. I don't know
if there's a current iteration of the Flintstones, but that's
a problem.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
I love that show.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
I would argue we are the current iteration of the
Flintstones as.

Speaker 6 (13:12):
Almost the human race.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Give us five more years, then we'll be right back
to Flintstones.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Cartoon four. World War We used to say World War
three will be fought with sticks and stones, but it's
going to be World War four, so everybody stay tuned.
We know the rules of credit are so old that
they are literally in the very first written laws of

(13:39):
human civilization. The Code of Hamarabi talks in depth about
a lot of legal ease, and they talk in depth
about credit and debt. But it makes sense when you
think about it, right, it's well before the age of
plastic cards and convenient smartphone apps. Nobody wanted to carry around,
to our earlier point, all those stone tablets. But we

(14:03):
do have to mention just to give you a taste
of how conspiratorial this gets. Fun fact, if you want
to be fun at parties, folks, The world's first known
international bank was created by Dylan drum roll if you
will perfect the Knights Templar, and.

Speaker 6 (14:22):
It was called the Iron Bank.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
No it is well, haven't see the new the New
Game of Throne show.

Speaker 6 (14:28):
I started watching House Dragons No.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I know George is a
little bit irritated about this.

Speaker 5 (14:39):
Was I think he likes this one.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
Actually I read an interview that he was more involved
but just does not like House of Dragons.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
That's one.

Speaker 5 (14:45):
It seems like he likes the adaptation.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Yeah, well, Finish wins the Winter, George.

Speaker 6 (14:49):
He says George, so he says he hates it anymore.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Let's just cast our minds back to the Knight's Templo
times when the Knights are rome around protecting things.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Dare we say crusading?

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, crusading, maybe a bit pillaging, and yeah, all kinds
of things. But one of the things they're really good
at is protecting goods as they moved along international routes
and trade routes and things like that, and you know,
as treasure is being plundered and moved from one place
to another. These banks became pretty important because you needed

(15:26):
to pay for stuff at different ports, right, and depending
on where you're traveling. If you're a wealthy businessman in
the Knights templar day, sure, I wealthy merchant.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
I'm the Pope at the pope point where I still
get along with the Knights templar, Yeah, I still trust
these guys to run the money because they don't run
all of it.

Speaker 5 (15:49):
Yet.

Speaker 6 (15:50):
Wasn't there a bit of a schism though at some
point or they started beefing.

Speaker 5 (15:53):
I think that's right.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Everybody check out our earlier episodes on The Knights Templar.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
And also check out Ridiculous History for some more info
on credit cards and credit scores if you wish.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
But I guess the big deal here is this is
still around the time when banks are seen as a
form of security, a physical place where you take your money.
And now it is safe because they've got a big
old box that they created with iron stuff. And then
there's dudes with swords standing outside going don't take this.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
And they have uniforms, which is super duper fancy for
the time, right, Like who can afford to be an
early adopter of laundry? Right, these guys?

Speaker 2 (16:32):
This is still the time when there are a ton
of human beings that end up having pretty good ideas,
but they have no means of carrying those ideas out right,
No money, no influence, no whatever. It is the thing
that you need to make a big thing happen.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
Right, But yeah, this one I remember these days. Yeah, yeah, I'm.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Sure you do, man, But there's so many There were
there were enough people out there with enough wealth, enough
accumulated treasure and stuff that they were like, hey, maybe
we could offer a little bit out and let you
do your thing as long as you give us a
little piece, a little taste on the other.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
End, Yeah, a little vigorous right tail. As old as
time or as old as human time. Fast forward, okay,
twenty twenty six. Hopefully this age as well, your credit
card activity is going to have an impact. And this
again it goes back to haba Robbie. Through the templars,

(17:29):
et cetera, your idea of trustworthiness or others perceived idea
of your trustworthiness, you're a way to predict your financial
behavior is going to have an impact on what is
called your credit score, which, if we're honest, is another
ancient and ridiculous concept similar to the necktie.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
Well and not entirely dissimilar from insurance and the way
people are judged to be insurable or if your driving record,
for example, which you are assigned to score too, is low,
you will pay much higher premium on your car insurance.
So it's also similar to predictive model.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Not all that stuff, all that stuff that your second
grade or third grade elementary school teacher told you about
your permanent record turns out to be true, but not
in the way they meant it. When they caught you,
you know, stealing crayons, or picking your nose or eating
For all the Marines in the crowd.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
It was the Wolford family in Atlanta. They were the
ones who knew.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
So you could argue a credit score is ridiculous, sure, objectively,
but maybe a necessary evil in these our modern evenings.
But how would we describe a credit score knowing that
capitalism is basically a religion. A credit score attempts to

(18:53):
quantify things that were always considered qualitative or moral about
human beings beforehand. It's a numerical representation of how much
trust you have earned.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
I think it goes up debt. What is it eight hundred?
Is it nine hundred? And then eight fifty? Okay, that's
perfect according to.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Eight fifty for most people. Once you get to a
certain echelon of socioeconomics, you're beyond credit scores.

Speaker 4 (19:24):
Well sure, and you know it's interesting too, how much
of it is counterintuitive because you know, you would think
that you could opt out and by having zero debt
or having zero credit card, you know payments, that you
would have a perfect credit score.

Speaker 6 (19:38):
Not true.

Speaker 4 (19:39):
It's something you have to build, which is why your
parents might have told you, like, get one credit card
when you're a teenager, they get it for you and
use it only to pay for gas and then pay
it off every month, which is a smart thing to
do because you are then establishing credit age, which is
one of the factors that go into that number.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Yeah, one of the five oh, one of the big
five to eight, because it gets not all sources agree.
A credit score, simply put, includes things like your payment history,
which goes to age of your appearance in the system,
and then your debt to your debt ratio. How much
money do you currently owe compared to the amount of

(20:18):
money that you could owe in the future, which is
not the same amount or not the same ratio as
the money you owe versus the money you could make
or create or acquire in the future. It's how much
how deep in the hole can this individual go and

(20:38):
still give us our vigorous I'm saying that because we're
all fans of the Sopranos for sure.

Speaker 5 (20:44):
Yeah, be watching that lately.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Actually, Well, in there, you've also got length of credit history,
amount of new credit, and your credit mix.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Oh what's that?

Speaker 6 (20:53):
What's your credit mix?

Speaker 3 (20:55):
You gotta diversify your portfolio, you know what I mean?
Like it it's such a imagine you are a bank
and think of banking as someone who think of it
as a bank, as a person who is evaluating folks
they will date in an open relationship. You don't want.

(21:17):
It's such a turnoff, you know, when you see someone
who only has a mortgage, right, they only have one
kind of debt, they only have a car note where
their credit cards, you know what I mean, be interesting
on your profile otherwise wipe left for sure.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
But also like you don't want to see someone that
has too many credit cards, even if they're paying correctly
and they don't you know, oh too much or they're
not underwater, because I think credit cards are referred to
as revolving accounts, which is one particular type of accounts,
whereas a mortgage is its own thing, car loans its
own thing. So you kind of want to have a

(21:54):
mix of the different types of loans and then not
too many revolving accounts, right again, diversified.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
At this moment, we should all look at our credit scores,
not say them out loud, but just take note of
exactly what they are and then keep track after this
episode goes live and see if they get affected.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
And because it folks with your age, it fiks with
your credit age.

Speaker 6 (22:19):
Never close your oldest one.

Speaker 5 (22:20):
Ever.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
We are going to get into the creepiest thing, though,
is that they know personal stuff about you.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
What we're saying here, folks, is this idea of a
credit score includes the number of active accounts you possess,
which sorts of accounts those are, how old they are,
how young they are. It's best to think of it
as somewhere between a financial version of a report card

(22:46):
or a fingerprint, and it, just like your fingerprint, it
contains a lot more detail about you than you might
cursorily imagine as real world impact. You get a credit
report based on your credit score, or you can if
you manually request it. And this is a three digit
number that has a huge impact in how much interest

(23:11):
you'll have to pay for a given loan of any sort,
as well as the types of loans or credit cards
you can get. In the first place, it quantifies again,
it quantifies what was once seen as moral character, the
trust in you from institutions future actions that you may

(23:32):
or may not take, and that level of trust is
expressed in stuff like the interest rate on a given loan,
or whether or not you can get a loan for.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
Sure, and it's just you know, not particularly transparent, which
we are going to get into. And if anyone out
there is interested in having a quick look see at
your credit score, you can get a credit Karma account
which does not do what's called a hard inquiry for
showing you that credit. Every time you run a credit
check with a getting a loan or a car loan

(24:04):
or whatever, you get a hard inquiry on your account,
and those hard inquiries credit to take a ding. There
isn't a neat little rule where if you're shopping for credit,
you're shopping for a loan, they only count at once.
If it's the same type of loan and the same
type of companies for the same product. That's dinging your
credit report. So don't worry too much if you're looking

(24:27):
for a car that each one of those credit.

Speaker 5 (24:29):
Checks is going to ding your account.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
But if you want to take a look, go and
get a free Credit Karma account. It's actually a pretty
cool service.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
We are not sponsored by Credit Karma currently, but that
is a great point technology both aids and in perils
human civilization, especially with broken systems like this. Look, we
don't have to be financial wizards or sorcerers to immediately
clock how profoundly this can impact or alter a person's life.

(25:00):
And given the level of importance here, it is understandable
to assume that surely someone is at the wheel. Surely
there's something like a single big government agency to keep
track of all of this, like the EPA or the
FDA used to keep track of environmental problems, or you

(25:20):
know the food that you eat shout out to the jungle,
or at.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Least maybe there's a giant a giant room somewhere filled
with files in the Pentagon where the smoking man can
go put these important docs in. No.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, something like an authority figure that agency. We prefer
an agency to an individual right would be like any
other federal agency up until recent years, subject to all
sorts of anti corruption measures, regular reviews, and so on
and so on and so forth to keep the average

(25:54):
American from getting unfair treatment. We are kidding. You love
that assumption, and it is the right assumption. But unfortunately
that assumption is incorrect. The current US credit system, which
impacts everybody, no matter who you vote for, no matter
what kind of music you listen to, no matter where

(26:15):
you live. This system depends upon not one, but multiple
private companies, and they hoover up as much of your data,
financial data and more as possible, they compile it, and
then they sell it at a profit to any lender
that is gained to buy that information. As time goes on,

(26:39):
this arrangement leads to serious problems. Dare we say conspiracy.
Here's where it gets crazy. That's right, folks, friends and neighbors.
If you live in the United States, our financial future

(27:02):
is literally determined by private entities. You do not get
to vote for their leadership. You do not get to
vote against their leadership. And to our earlier point, you
cannot not play the.

Speaker 5 (27:16):
Game for sure.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
And like you know, one of these types of data
analytic companies that's been around for a long time is
FCO or the fair Isaac and Company, which you can
buy publicly on the stock market. They are very much
a for profit institution.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, and if you have certain credit cards on that
credit card app, you can have direct access to FICO
and all of their fun, exciting sounding, innocuous sounding services
that check up on your credit all the time, not
just once a year. You know, the way that legislation
went through two thousand and three to let us all
have one credit report every year from all the three

(27:55):
big agencies.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Oh nights.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Now you can just have a constant credit report and
be like, ooh, this happened. It went down five points.

Speaker 6 (28:04):
Oh, yes, for sure.

Speaker 4 (28:07):
And I kind of got off the point when I
brought up credit karma. I was mentioning transparency. And one
thing that I have found out in mentioning, you know,
in various lending situations, what my credit karma score was.
Often that's given a little bit of an eye roll,
and the you know folks that are doing the lending
tend to say that it's not entirely accurate, but it's
a relatively decent gauge. So there isn't like this full

(28:30):
transparency with that.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Numb And here's our big reveal. The big badgers in
this bag of conspiracy are three private companies. There are others.
The ones that are impacting, as you said, Noel Fiico,
the ones that are showing up on your countless apps.

(28:52):
They're going to be Equifax, Experience in TransUnion, each of
which have their own fascinating histories. We're only listing the
in alphabetical order here. In twenty twenty six you will
find countless again, countless innumerable apps and services that show
you what these badgers think of you financially on a

(29:14):
range of three hundred to about eight point fifty, again
a three digit number from poor to excellent. And I
fantasize sometimes guys about the people who are beyond the
religion of money, right, the billionaire the real ones that
we don't hear about, Like what's the real financial worth

(29:36):
quote unquote of someone like Royalty or Vladimir Putin. I'm
picturing this is very anime, right, but I'm picturing someone
who has a credit score of one, and they could
do whatever they want, you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 (29:51):
Interesting the grid to disconnect from society.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
I didn't realize this, but I was doing a little
cursory Google, and you know businesses and you know corporations,
they do also have credit scores. There are business credit
scores and individual credit scores.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
But as we'll get.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
Into, not quite sure that those numbers are treated the
same or have the same level of impact, whether your
corporation or an individual.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
I know we're not going to go fully into the
background of these companies. We can't. Each one would be
a full episode on their own because the storied histories
of these companies go back really far. A lot of
them go back to, let's say, the oil industry. If
we look at TransUnion just quickly, if you go back
to the roots of Standard Oil. Right, well, when oil

(30:36):
was going gangbusters in the United States and that Texas
Tea was doing its thing, you had to find a
way to move that oil to other places. We've talked
in the past on the show about the rail in
the United States and how important that was. Right, well,
there's this thing called the Union Tank Car Company. What
they did is they figured out how to make the
first wooden rail cars to send oil across the country.

(31:01):
Eventually they figured out that metal was a better idea
for you know, transferring the oil. But they started out right,
they're starting from the bottom, and just imagine the amount
of wealth and money that is accruing through that oil
industry through people like John D. Rockefeller who controlled Standard Oil,
and then all of that money that's being generated that

(31:21):
is now able to or at least people at the
top are thinking, how do we make more money? Is
are there other avenues to make money? And one of
those things is figuring out who is worthy of getting
the money. How did it go from oil companies like that,
or let's say, if you look at another one, Equifax
and the Wolford family in Atlanta back in eighteen ninety nine,

(31:44):
same type of thing, figuring out how do we make
a company out of figuring out who is worthy of
getting all of this money we've accrued? Right, right, And
so to me, the big conspiracy is that it's a
method of control, right by these people who are already
in power, who were obscenely wealthy back in the eighteen

(32:05):
hundred early nineteen hundreds, figuring out how do they decide
and control who gets the money.

Speaker 4 (32:11):
And that's kind of happening in tandem with more elaborate
versions of lending and extending credit and financial products, and
all of a sudden, now you've got this industry that
needs some metric on how we divvy those pieces of
the pie up, you know, to the people that are
like below the oil magnates, how do we include them
but also make as much money off of them as
humanly possible?

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, again, the templars right established pattern. Find that pattern.
It also reminds me. I don't want to call you
out here, NOL, but I think you'll appreciate this one.
I think you'll appreciate too, Matt and Dylan. I was
recently thinking about gift cards, something as innocuous as a
gift card, like a Starbucks card, a Target card. Not

(32:57):
just dunking on those. But insert dunkin Donuts while we're
at it. Insert any company with a gift card.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
But are you referring to me my historical perspective that
gift cards are a terrible, thoughtless gift.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Oh you guys, remember we used to get iTunes like
twenty dollars iTunes gift cards from the company way back
in the day.

Speaker 6 (33:18):
Yeah, it's the kind of gift the company would give.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
It's the gift. Yeah, for sure, it's the gift of
distant aunts would give, which is description.

Speaker 4 (33:28):
I don't want to be limited to where I can
use my card. Just give me cash in an envelope.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Here's the grift. And agreed, right, I don't care about
which currency it is from the world, you know, give me,
give me the main coupons. Here's why gift cards are
a grift. This is a conspiracy that's dive in an episode.
We just live in this world and we need you
to know about.

Speaker 5 (33:49):
It, folks.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Some of these big companies love giving out gift cards, right.
They're around at the impulse bisection of every grocery store.

Speaker 6 (34:00):
Pause.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
The company takes that expense and invest it and makes
money off the interest and knows, gosh darn well that
a certain percentage of people will never use the gift card.
It's a brilliant way of making secondary revenue, just like
insurance companies, just like a lot of the data gatherers.

(34:22):
Check out our earlier episode about how much your data
is worth individually.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
I'd love to see the ledgers that a big corporation
has of how much money is floating out there in
gift card form, and then how they reconcile with that
with the potential of people not ever using them or
losing What that calculation is. It's got to be some
serious sithematical jiu jitsu.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
It's mentat stuff. Shout out to Doune dude.

Speaker 4 (34:49):
Yes, mentats are the They're the mentats, the freshman.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Post butlerry and jihad mentaiti case, the thinking machines. I
am fun at parties. Boom.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
That's what it's up your dune reference for the day,
and the episode brought to you by Equifax. So guys,
there's this whole thing back in the day. These companies,
because we're talking about some of them got started in
you know, the early nineteen hundred. Some of them switch away.

(35:25):
Equifax changed to Equifax in nineteen seventy five, but before
it was the retail credit company. And these companies used
physical means. They use the technology of the day in
physical means to gather information on people, right.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Yeah, a, which is the original sin of the problem.
What are the problems we'll get to for sure.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Oh yeah. But as we move into the digital age,
every single one, well especially these three big companies begin
acquiring tech companies, specifically tech companies that are really good
at tracking data and usage of things and how you
live your life, all the little things you do to
make up that score. So as we continue down this

(36:09):
list of the craziness, just remember that this has evolved
quickly since around two thousand and three, actually hit the jaker,
Yeah exactly. That's when these companies become the all knowing,
all seeing data collection vacuums that they are.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Now I've sour yes, we know. We've got to step
back for a second here and know, aside from what
we're saying. I agree these each of these big badgers
can be their own episode either on stuff they don't
want you to know or sister show ridiculous History. Also

(36:49):
the gift card thing, that's a gift card from us
to you. Be very careful about that around the holidays.
We do have to know in the interest of objectivity.
To the earlier point, credit reporting bureaus in the United States,
they are not just three. I'm doing the I watched
in Glorious Bastard, So I'm very careful with my threes now.

(37:11):
But there is another genre of a very similar thing
to that earlier point called a credit rating agency or
credit rating agencies, which do essentially the same thing, but
with the finances of companies and nation states. So again,
even if you're a country, it's difficult to opt out.

Speaker 5 (37:32):
Of the game.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, And that's like Standard and Poors And I don't
know what are there any others we can list right
here of that type you're talking about, because they are
similar and some of them do very like the same things,
like both private and corporate. And it gets really, it
gets hairy when you try and dig down into it.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Yeah, and it just gets so confusing too, because you know,
we hear about people having their companies being downgraded or
country is even being downgraded. And you know, we talked
a little bit about how the credit bureaus look at
scores of individual humans. But then of course corporations do
have a form of a credit score. But what about

(38:11):
countries that have a massive deficit and that's sort of
by design owing other countries' money. And it's all this
imaginary kind of web of like you know, robbing Peter
to pay Paul, and it just gets it, really does,
matt to your point kind of make your head spin.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
And I do have to recuse myself in the earlier
question as no spoilers currently in a country where I'm
not going to talk about that stuff until I get
back to the States. Moving on, you know, granted, if
everything what do what what do you mean? What? Moving on? Matthew? No,

(38:50):
what do you mean? Everything is above board? We make
it back? If the credit bureau stuff works, then are
it's a win win right for institutions and individuals alike.
You know, if you're a lender, you can avoid someone
defaulting on a loan, and if you're an individual, right

(39:11):
you will have a guardrail that stops you from falling
deeper and deeper into a hole into some feedback loop
of unpayable interest right and or buros of debt. The
issue is, as we've been establishing here, everything is not
above board. These systems have so many cartoonishly disastrous problems.

(39:34):
We looked into the research, We read a lot of stuff.
Government officials, journalists, consumer advocates, tons of academics have pointed
out these problems in general and in specific, over and
over and over again. There's so many problems in fact,
that we we should explore them as separate categories all

(39:57):
their own. They're like spokes on an insidious way wheel
rolling over innocent people, or you know, fingers what a
shadowy hand right at your financial neck. Okay, first off, opacity,
This probably bugs us all the most. Do you guys
think the credit reports are intentionally difficult for the average

(40:19):
barrower to understand?

Speaker 5 (40:21):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (40:22):
I think so.

Speaker 4 (40:23):
It's the same way that government, and you know, various
methods of influencing policy and politics are also incredibly vague
and it's very difficult to figure out, you know, where
you can actually exercise some agency and all of these things,
and the way things are hidden in bills and all
of that. Yes, it's all entirely designed to be as

(40:46):
non user friendly as possible, like the tax code, Like
I mean, it's all just an esoteric af.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Well, and similar to trying to think is there a
one to one anywhere in our lives? We're not allowed.
We're not. We weren't for a long time allowed to
know exactly what was in our credit report, like the
full thing, all the details, until two thousand and three
when it was kind of cemented with legislation and what

(41:13):
is in the name of that, the Fair Credit Reporting
Act of nineteen seventy and then in two thousand and three,
the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of two thousand
and three. So the first one gave consumers the right
to know the information stored about them in corporate data banks.
But again, how much of that information did we actually
get to learn about that's stored in there?

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Yeah, and it was not proactively granted. It gave you
the right to manually request it.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yes, yeah, exactly. It's not like it's just open information anymore.
And thank god, is not open information because you don't
want everybody to know all of that stuff. But some
corporate entity. Maybe three of them know all of that stuff.
But then the one for two thousand and three gave
us the right to get one every year from each
of the reporting agencies.

Speaker 6 (42:00):
Upon request, request or something.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Right, Yeah, well, because you had I think experience. Oh god,
I can't remember. I think it was experience. They're the
ones who got their handslapped of the hardest because they
were trying to sell everybody for like seventy dollars your
credit report or something crazy.

Speaker 6 (42:18):
We're the privilege.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Well, let's let's exercise empathy, folks. And this is going
to be common to a lot of us tuning in tonight.
So let's say you're doing everything right. You have played
the game right. You maybe you paid off your student
loans and your credit score dipped for a second and
you're like why, And then it repaired over time, right,

(42:41):
it started to grow back up into the rarefied air
of excellent credit. And you check stuff one day because
you're proactive, right, you're on your side if no one else,
and you see your score dropped suddenly. In a microcosm
for a perfect weird analogy, here, you're dating someone. Everything's

(43:01):
going great. You wake up one morning and they're like,
you Stink're like, oh, I took a shower yesterday, and
they said, no, you stink is a person I don't
decided personality your whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, And you're like, well,
what did I do? They say, Well, if you have
to ask, then that makes you worse.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
Well, if we're, if we're, if we're taking a little
moment to talk about this scenario and actual relationships, just
don't bother worrying because you'll beat yourself up over it
and you'll never know.

Speaker 6 (43:29):
You can never know.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
So it's similar to you know, for analogous purple purposes,
you can also never know the true details of what
that number represents.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Right, Yeah, it can. To our point about the free
some of this legislation, it could be historically difficult, damnably
difficult to learn why the credit score changed. Right from
your perspective, you have not altered your behavior in anything
but a positive way. If you cannot figure out the

(44:02):
root of a problem or why an issue is occurring,
you're going to have a devil of a time fixing it. Right.
The optuse nature of these systems comes about for a
simple reason. They are each different. They're designed on the
same idea, just the same way that the metric system
and the weird system we have in the US attempts

(44:26):
to measure distance. Right, they call it different names, but
they're still looking at length and weight and so on.
The issue with these systems, all of them, is that
they are designed for lenders, not for you. If you're
watching this and you are human, they are not designed
for you. The credit reports are riddled with complex jargon,

(44:48):
weird codes that are not intuitive to the average person.
And that is because you are not their customer. You
and your data are their product. Okay, So like, if
we're making widgets, do we care what the widget thinks
of what happens at the factory?

Speaker 2 (45:09):
And don't take that lightly because you can look at
something like Equifax's mosaic platform that they've got, and you
can look at politicians who look at that for election data,
at big companies who look at that same information to
see how to target people for both ads and for

(45:31):
where to put up next fast food joint or whatever.
And people use that kind of platform. People corporations use
that kind of platform.

Speaker 6 (45:41):
To major decisions.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, yeah, people find but these corporations are using you.
Just as Ben said, as a as a tiny little
drop in their huge sea of data to sell other
people and their other products and.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Additional it's not just one big bad, It's not just
one sith Lord. We have so many private cooks in
the same profit driven kitchen. They don't get along, right,
They've got the profit motive becomes their ego, right, and
this analogy, so life altering data can be spread against

(46:22):
these or across these different bureaus with no consolidation. Don't
worry if it's confusing. These agencies proposed to fix the
problem they created by also pushing you to pay extra
for a subscription service or to sacrifice more of your
data or donate it, you know, like the vampires run

(46:44):
the blood bank. They do this instead of the free
reports the government has mandated they provide you upon request.
This leads us to hidden history. We've teased it a bit,
big criticism, and this is very important to us, and
we hope it's important to you. There is pretty stark

(47:05):
evidence that US credit bureaus perpetuate historical systemic discrimination and racism.
As we were discussing off air, we're talking about what
I compare it to pinkertons redlining. Oh sorry, Yeah, no, no,
perfect Pinkerton's man Redlining cove on. There's a great article,

(47:25):
a primer on this, you can read if you want
to quick catch up on it from The Guardian back
in twenty fifteen. And Noel, she's talking. The author of
the journalist, Sarah Ludwig, is talking about exactly what you're describing.
US banks refusing to provide loans or basic infrastructure. We're

(47:46):
not building our bank here in this neighborhood because of redlining, right.
Could you tell us a little more about redlining?

Speaker 4 (47:53):
Yeah, I mean I couldn't get into the minutia of it,
but in general, it just has to do with considering
certain areas based on demographic information regarding race and income,
and using that to exclude individuals.

Speaker 5 (48:09):
Who reside in those areas.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
On the basis of their location, which is inherently tied
to exclusionary racist principles identity.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Yes, especially black and Latino neighborhoods in the US. And
then this gets okay, So first off, I'm a household
of four, right, and I'm in a neighborhood that the
banks don't like historically, so they're not going to build
a branch there even if I have done the American

(48:44):
dream and created a small business and would be a
very good customer. I am sol would be the appropriate abbreviation,
because we're still figuring out how much we can curse
on Netflix. This is compound by deregulation and it leads
these more predatory alternatives payday loans, the serious interest rates,

(49:08):
and then of course check cashing outfits. They take the
king's portion of your paycheck in a percentage for quote
unquote processing.

Speaker 4 (49:17):
Even like if you have venmo or cash app for example,
if you want that money transferred to your bank account,
it costs you something to get it done day of
as opposed to waiting three or four days and it
be free. Maybe the people that make the least amount
of money need it the quickest, and they're making a
little veig off of that to get the money that

(49:39):
you already are due.

Speaker 5 (49:40):
You know it's.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
Yeah, and get this guys, Those same banks responsible for
creating this problem usually own or finance those same payday
loans and predatory check cashing outfits. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Often the creeviiest thing for me, guys, is that these
organizations that collect all this data can empower an individual,
say someone who's in charge of a smaller bank or
an organization like a bigger bank. This data can empower
those groups to make those decisions like, oh, we don't
like you individually, person on paper here, so you cannot

(50:21):
move in. You cannot buy property in this county or
in this district or in this area, right.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Or even individual landlords, thou shalt not rent this apartment.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Oh yeah, absolutely, And and it goes so much deeper
even if you go to Transunion's True Audience, which takes
all of that stuff in and again figures out what
ads you should look you should be looking at, I
guess because of the previous transactions you've made on your
credit cards, because those groups can kind of see what
you're into by whatever it is that your credit card
pays for. They're like, oh, this person, we already have

(50:54):
all that demographic data we're talking about, but we also
know what this person likes, and now we can sell
them all that stuff. But we also don't like what
they like, so now they can't move in here. It's
all connected, and it's all possible there because of the
amount of data being collected.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Right, as Flannery O'Connor once said, all things that rise converge, right,
especially your information, folks. It's deeper than hip hop. We
know that, we know. Another example of this would be ultimate.
The ultimate example of this is what is sometimes called
a two tiered financial system. So, with these insane rates

(51:35):
or with this soft discrimination, which is a technologically driven
discrimination that legislation has yet to catch up with. With
these insane rates, zurious percentages, crazy interest, people in these
communities become much more likely to fall behind or to

(51:55):
indeed default on a loan this rexy person's credit score,
or it creates a uru burus of inescapable debt, and thus,
through no faults of their own, through no flaw in
character nor lack of willingness to succeed, these folks get screwed.
It's the only way to say it.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
And with that, we're gonna take a quick break and
come back and learn more about the messed up stuff
going on up in here.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
All right, Yeah, our next beef with this well, uh well,
well it ma out. It mays out like we're just
yelling at the sky here. The systems are kind of arbitrary, right,
It's kind of silly.

Speaker 4 (52:43):
Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean beyond just the lack
of transparency in what goes into that number that you
see on credit Karma. You know, between the two main
agencies that they show you, there does appear to be
a lot of kind of bobbing and weaving and sort
of improv going on behind the scenes when it comes
to the way the Big three come up with that

(53:05):
score and your credit worthiness. Regulatory audits have found that
there is a ton of variations scoring for it's similar
like airline prices or the way that sky miles.

Speaker 5 (53:16):
Counts, you know, and when they're worth.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
Like you might see one person who's got the same
exact situation, same exact number of cards, same exact mix
of accounts and types of loans and credit, and they
might have different numbers. Now I'm not saying that those
numbers would be like wildly different, but it does appear
that there isn't a whole lot of continuity between, you know, situations.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
I would just say, I've personally seen that where I've
got three different reports that I kind of monitor and
they will never be the exact same. I don't know
if there's one time where they're all three the exact
same and it's all my same situation.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
What do you guess send it to you know, Like,
let's extended to two people, right, two people getting their
three big three credit reports. So let's say you and
a random buddy, Like you're saying, no, you live the
exact same life. Weirdly enough, somehow, from cradle to grave,
you make all the same financial decisions at the exact

(54:18):
same time. Right, you have all the same inputs and outputs.
Logically you would have the same credit score. Right. Oh,
and you live in the same place for instance, Just
to make it, you know, two different people, not just
one person with three reports, two different people each with
three reports. If they're all doing the same thing, If
both these guys are doing the same thing, then they

(54:40):
should have the same variation. However, Dylan, can we get
a buzzer noise? Wrong? We be incorrect. This is demonstrably
not the case now, as you were saying a second ago, there, Noel,
is it a great variation? Not all the time, not
all the time. But this is why you might find

(55:01):
yourself doing pretty dang good with one financial info cartel,
and then less good in the opinion of another. Right
along the way, you'll find something else disturbing. Despite all
their power, despite the acquisition and deployment, big data, and

(55:22):
the way they lean on the government. The Big three
often still get stuff completely wrong. Let's go back to
the credit card analogy. What if we look at guys,
what were your favorite classes in uh, say high school?

Speaker 5 (55:40):
Yes? History, Science, Yeah, social studies, Oh.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Right, yeah, love the studies. So let's say we've got
our protagonist here and we have each acet out use English.
So we have each aced every single quiz, every homework assignment,
every test. We know good and gosh darn well, we
got an A plus on every single possible graded thing.

(56:10):
But when the report card arrives, we see a big
old B minus for science, a B minus for history
of B minus for English. We have all our assignments
with us, we look back at them, we shuffle through
our papers, we looked through our quizzes and our homework
lo and behold, a plus on every single one. We say,

(56:31):
what happened in a classroom setting, you would go to
your teacher, and we hope that your teacher would clock
the mistake. We hope your teacher would have your back
and correct it and say, oh, Tennessee, oh, Copenhagen, Brown, Oh,
Matt Frederick, Oh, redacted. You did get an A plus.
We're correcting it. But it is not the case with

(56:52):
credit reports. Have you, guys ever tried to correct aid
and inaccuracy on one of the credit reports?

Speaker 4 (56:58):
I mean the bureau in the name. Anytime you engage
with bureaucracy, it's not going to be any fun and
typically once again set up to fail, set up for
you to fail, because in order to actually do the thing,
to even speak to a human, which probably still wouldn't happen,
it's going to be prohibitively pedantic and obnoxious, and the

(57:18):
process is not going to be set up for you
to succeed. We are talking about things like personal information
that's gotten wrong, incorrect balances, and amount owed versus available credit.
We're talking about delinquent marks, which we haven't really talked
about much in the episode. The idea of being in

(57:39):
collections also, by the way, being in collections is such
a vague thing. I recently got a collection noticed for
a hospital bill that I had not realized wasn't paid
off for a time that my kid went to a
children's hospital many years ago, and it did not hit
my credit. I caught it in time, even though there
was a collection out on me. They literally told me

(58:00):
it's not going to hit your credit. The timing as
to when those things hit your credit or impact your
score super vague as well, very very very little transparency
into that, not to mention that these things can be
recorded completely in error for you, as a human being,
with very little recourse.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
Or a mistaken identity. Shout out to all the John
Smiths out there. Old addresses something as simple as a
transposed number. Now in this it are high school metaphor
your teacher giving you an incorrect grade is not a person,
It's an algorithm. These are automated systems that are not consolidated.

(58:40):
That algorithm is woefully imperfect predicting behavior and at absorbing data.
That's why thousands of cases get all the way to
court every single year in the United States. But that
same opacity and arbitrary nature that makes these systems difficult
to part also makes them very difficult to fix. We

(59:03):
talked about it in the past. A company, a corporate entity,
especially these leviathans, they can afford to grind through a
courtroom dispute for years and years and years, but individuals
often can't afford to suffer through the consequences these protracted

(59:25):
legal battles. The game is brigged, agreed.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
I'm going to list off just a number of acquisitions
that have been made by TransUnion and Equifax over the years,
and these are all companies that were attempting to automate
certain data collection processes from different segments, from different markets.
Here you go, Credit Vision, Smart Move, Clear, iq E
Scan Data Systems, Trust, ev Factor, Trust Call, Credit Information Group.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
New Star, Sonick.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Oh wait, we've got more Hell Both Checks Incorporated, Osborne Laboratories,
Electronic Tabulating Services, Choice Point Clerdagy Electronics. You we've got
more Authority Talks, VEDA, Reach Tell. There's so many of them,
and they're all corporations that were acquired by these huge

(01:00:21):
organizations corporations in order to better track you and what
you do. But the problem that we're describing here is
that all of them have their own little algorithms that
they go into pulling all this data from places. If
you look at something as simple as the white pages
in the US, think about I don't know if any
guys have perused yourselves, or your family or anyone on

(01:00:42):
white pages recently.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
A lot of data is wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
So much data is wrong on that platform.

Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
It's it's not that dissimilar from the way, Like you know,
different social media platforms have their own algorithms. These are
proprietary things, uh, and they will yield different results and
analyze people's data in different ways, and then we have
this whole concept of which one is better in this situation.
I don't know that that's even the question we'll ask.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
It's a copy of a copy of a copy. Is
what happens when you aggregate from aggregators, such that an
imperfection can be like an artifact in video or audio.
I'm starting to personify it, but it can or anthropomorphize it.
It can expand, right, the small mistake, the small transposed number,

(01:01:34):
the wrong John Smith Right, that information is acquired by
a bigger and bigger fish, a bigger and bigger thing
in the sea of communication, and eventually that growth metastasizes, right,
with serious consequences. And this can be corrected. But the

(01:01:54):
onus is on you as the victim, right, The onus
is on you as the average person, as the non
institution in the party. So you're outnumbered, you're outmanned, you're outgunned,
and you have to go manually, right, unless you enlist
a pretty good lawyer, you have to go manually and

(01:02:15):
talk to the three big dogs of maybe a handful
of others and attempt to correct this attempt to get
an investigation. We mentioned earlier, the US federal government has
put forward a few good faith efforts that were objectively
kind of hindered or declaud in Congress and in action

(01:02:37):
to make these credit bureaus investigate those shenanigans, those missteps,
not all of which are wilful. They're just crimes of negligence.
And that's those corrections happen if they investigate in the
first place. And that leads us to the last point.
These bureaus don't really have an incentive to investigate or fix.

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
Errors, similar to like you know, filing a complaint with Twitter,
or filing a complaint with Roadblocks. You know, we know
there are all kinds of nefarious activity that goes on
there when you're dealing with a corporation or an agency
or an organization.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
Of that scale.

Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
I'm not making excuses for them, but it's difficult to
address every single you know, million of persons. You know,
the beef or a little discrepancy, it's difficult. I recognize that,
you know, same like with the irs and such like.
I can't imagine how they function these dates, but it's
it's it's them then deciding or having some sort of
internal threshold that.

Speaker 6 (01:03:37):
Itself is very opaque as.

Speaker 4 (01:03:40):
To what constitutes something that is worth them pursuing and
what constitutes something that is worth them giving you a
pat kind of you know, boiler plate generated response and
then move on.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Yeah, and I love that point because again the insective,
these are for profitents, so their incentive is to maintain
profit and to please their consumers. Their consumers again, are
the lenders, not you. So if the lenders are happy

(01:04:13):
with a little bit of jazz, a little bit of
inaccuracy here and there, then jolly good ticketyboo tally ho.
We know that big data, or the in simple terms,
the massive hoovering of all possible information Palenteer style. We

(01:04:33):
know that is very exciting and it has indeed been
positive or pitched as a solution to improving accuracy at
the root from the jump day one stuff. But don't
get us started on big data, folks. Just check out
our earlier episodes and wish us luck crossing international boarders,

(01:04:55):
we're doing this show.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
Well, sorry, guys, I had a little mind to burp
where I got interested in the shareholders of something like TransUnion,
which is a publicly traded company, and I just noticed
there's some there's some folks in here that we've talked
about before. Let's see number one at the top, according
to Yahoo Finance, with nineteen point one million shares, a

(01:05:20):
little group called black Rock Incorporated. Just below them with
nineteen point zero six million shares, Vanguard Group Incorporated, two
of the major investment firms that we've talked about before.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
In the past.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
It's just interesting that it's all interconnected in that way,
isn't it. The folks that get to decide how good
you are at having credit and how worthy.

Speaker 5 (01:05:43):
So the's slending you the money.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
And that apartment that you're trying to get is owned.

Speaker 6 (01:05:48):
But it's the same hand, the same buppet Weird Is
it weird?

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Though?

Speaker 5 (01:05:55):
I think it is.

Speaker 6 (01:05:55):
It makes absolute sense. It is utterly by.

Speaker 4 (01:05:58):
Design and isn't particularly surprising at all, Like we just
you know, it's like.

Speaker 5 (01:06:05):
It's frustrating, is what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
It's yikes, yike's indeed, And there are questions about solutions. Right,
there are a lot of cases we probably won't get
into this evening. We do want to shout out something
called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFB. In January
of last year, the CFPB sued the heck out of

(01:06:28):
our good friends at Experience for quote unlawfully failing to
properly investigate consumer disputes, and you can read their full
statement online. And Matt to your point, there are a
lot of powerful people with their fingers in the pies
of these financial entities.

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
Sure tracks that they wouldn't you know, follow those threads
because it doesn't particularly benefit them or their lenders, who
are their clients. What came of some of those like
are are they being taken to task or are we
talking risk slappy type.

Speaker 5 (01:07:02):
Stuff, which is of course what you would imagine.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
A couple, you know, a couple dozen million dollars and
they're like, oh, no.

Speaker 6 (01:07:11):
Being a drop in the bucket, is what you're saying exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of cautious optimism, hopefulness
that there could be a real dialogue that could trigger
a sea change, you know, maybe help prepare broken system.
The case was dismissed in August of that same year
tracks not even not even a slap.

Speaker 4 (01:07:36):
That's just just just a outright let's move on, guys,
nothing to see here.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
Whoo. Yeah, the judge, Michelle Williams in the Central District
of California did dismiss the suit without prejudice, which is
not the worst outcome because it means that our friends
at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, despite massive budget cuts,

(01:08:02):
can file a complaint in the future. Who knows, maybe.

Speaker 4 (01:08:06):
It'll work out wonderful, the right to complain. Thank you
so much for that, blessing, benevolent financial overlords.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
Oh dear, So what do you think, guys? Are there solutions?
Have we done an okay job outlining the credit bureau conspiracy.

Speaker 5 (01:08:24):
Of how ft it is? Yeah? I think so. I
think so.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
I think we've done an awesome job. It does go deeper, though,
and it goes into the things we've already talked about.
We just we didn't dig down into them in the
way I think we could in a future episode. And
it's about the security state and the surveillance state thing
that you know was growing and we were all warned
about over and over and over again.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
Not to mention, we didn't get into how interest rates
are set, and like the FED and the dispute going
on between the administration of the presidential administration and the
head of the FED, who is claiming that he's being
targeted for not doing the bidding financially. Speaking of the president, MMM,
whether you agree with that or not, that is what

(01:09:08):
he is asserting. Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Reserve, really as the financial systems really are all connected.
And the creepy thing to me is how all of
that goes back into just how much they know about
us individually and how that was kind of how it
was supposed to be from the jump, like they were
just supposed to know about us and everything that we did,
so they can kind of keep tabs on us. Maybe

(01:09:34):
maybe not, Maybe that's too.

Speaker 5 (01:09:35):
Much, too far of a lost I can tell you that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Over the Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Josh Lower in November of
twenty twenty two talked about the connection between the surveillance
state and credit reporting agencies. You can read it. It's
titled Credit Reporting and the History of Commercial Surveillance in America.
I think you do have to have a subscription to
something some version of the thing in order to see

(01:09:58):
all of his writing.

Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
But it is.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Fascinating linking stuff all the way back to the Civil
War and before to the modern twenty first century credit
reporting data collection.

Speaker 4 (01:10:09):
Take me back to the Stone Age. I'll take clay
tablets over this stuff any day of the week.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Speaking a linear time. Who knows. Maybe in the future
we will see some genuine solutions right to the stuff
we explore tonight. We do a lot of research for
these things. We never write a script. We explore it
organically together. Maybe we'll see accountability for data providers at
every level to avoid those problems that magnify over time.

(01:10:36):
Maybe we'll see proactive free access, meaning that it's on
the big dogs, the big badgers, to send you a
credit report without you manually requesting it, or going through
an app which also harvests the data on your phone,
or you know, maybe just better accuracy of information in

(01:10:57):
the first place. Guys, I wanted to ask group a
question about the argument of personal responsibility right, the argument
that if you play the game right, you will naturally prosper.
What do we think about that conversation the winter.

Speaker 4 (01:11:15):
I mean, it's just so hard to feel that you
can achieve that without just some significant windfall or bit
of luck or being born on third base. You know,
maybe I'm cynical, or maybe you know, the state of
the world has put me in this mindset. I think
you can. Definitely, it's certainly possible to work yourself up
from the ground up and become successful, But it just

(01:11:36):
seems more and more like the deck is way stacked
against us in that respect.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
There are all these commercial entities out there pushing apps
and services that can increase your credit score by like
twenty points, you know, and that's a big win, and
it could be a big win for somebody, But how
big of a change is twenty points? Actually, if you
look at the difference between you know, someone in the
six hundreds versus someone in the eight hundreds, and how
you know, it feels like you'd have to win the

(01:12:02):
lottery to be able to pay off all of your
existing debts and then do a bunch of other stuff
with money before you could go from the five hundred
and six hundreds all the way up. It feels like that,
And maybe that's wrong. Maybe we just haven't seen enough
examples of that happening in the news or something.

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
I mean, twenty points, you could see your credit dipping
twenty points from one of those hard inquiries. You could
see your credit score dipping twenty points just from one
delinquent payment. You could see your credit score dipping twenty
points from maybe closing one older account, which I think
we didn't maybe talk about on MIC, but definitely, if
you're going to close accounts, don't close.

Speaker 5 (01:12:38):
Your oldest one.

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):
That's the one that's establishing your credit age and a
very big factor in that number.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
It's just upsetting you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
Yeah, agreed. I mean, I think we can all agree,
after exploring this together, that the system, if not broken,
is pretty rigged. You know. It reminds me that joke
in the Wild West where a guy is playing a
clearly rigged game of poker in an old timey saloon.

(01:13:09):
Another guy walks in and says, hey, you know this guy,
this game is rigged, right, And the guy in the
saloon says, I do, but it's the only game in town.
So maybe there should be a different game. Maybe we
should go for a system that is not so obtuse,
so full of bullying, or riddled with profit seeking middleman.

(01:13:29):
For now, it does seem fair to say this is
chock full of the stuff they don't want you to know.

Speaker 4 (01:13:35):
Well, it's interesting because these are public, publicly traded, for
profit institutions, and I guess it feels like that they're
all in cohoots with one another to some degree. And
the argument that it's not a monopoly is because they
are like a handful of them. But it sure feels
like a monopoly because the system is the thing that

(01:13:55):
doesn't change that you have no other choice but to
participate in this credit system, So that feels a bit
like a monopoly to me.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
I don't know, because we didn't talk about the visa
and MasterCard of it all, right, and how all of
this stuff, all roads and all credit cards and all
credit reporting agencies all lead back to the same issuing companies, right,
and then how every one of those transactions can be
traced and tracked and calculated as to what that means

(01:14:23):
for your personal score and also the score of wherever
you live and the score of people in your same
demographic and it's all connected.

Speaker 4 (01:14:32):
It's kind of like stats for cars and Mario Kart,
Like when you look at them on the screen, they're
one thing, but there's actually a lot of secret stats
that you actually have to drive on certain surfaces to
figure out what those are because they're not represented in
the numbers that you see in front of your eyeballs.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
We also didn't talk about the aggressive marketing campaigns and
the aggressive political lobbying that the Big three Badgers use
to put themselves in the catbird seat in the first place.
There's clearly more to get into here, and we hope
that we hope that this is one of those episodes

(01:15:07):
that might have sounded deceptively like a snoozefest, but really
hits on some genuine, true conspiracy, some of which may
not be intentional. We would love to hear your thoughts.
You can find us on lie. You can call us
on a phone. You can always send us an email
mm HM.

Speaker 4 (01:15:25):
Can find us on your social media platform of choice
at the handle conspiracy stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending,
and you can also give us a telephone call.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
We have a number. It is one eight three three
STDWYITK use one of these, probably one that doesn't have
a shattered.

Speaker 6 (01:15:43):
Screen and call it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
You will get our voicemail and you will be able
to talk for about three minutes. Give yourself a cool
nickname and let us know if we can use any
message on the air. If you would like to send
us an email, you can do that too.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
We are the entity's the read each piece of correspondence receive.
Let's hang out here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio
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Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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